


Patchwork Glory

by AkuChibi



Series: Picking Up the Pieces [2]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Viewpoints, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, IDK what else to tell you, Look it's random scenes from Another Piece of the Puzzle okay, M/M, Manipulation, Missing Scenes, Nightmares, Random POVs, Reyes is a murderous marshmallow, Tris is broken, Violence, but maybe not as broken as he thinks, give my boy all the love okay, maybe some sex, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 12:17:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21507817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkuChibi/pseuds/AkuChibi
Summary: Missing scenes or alternative takes on scenes from Another Piece of the Puzzle (That Doesn't Fit). Told from various POVs instead of just Tris's like in the main story. You guys requested and it's finally here!Want to see a scene from someone else's POV? Leave a comment and let me know!
Relationships: Male Ryder | Scott/Reyes Vidal, Tris/Reyes
Series: Picking Up the Pieces [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550248
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Lunatic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People like Tris are raging lunatics--but Liam's the definition of crazy. 
> 
> Or, Liam's thought process in the early chapters of Another Piece of the Puzzle from the moment Tris tries to save him from falling out of that shuttle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between chapters 2 and 14 of Another Piece of the Puzzle (That Doesn't Fit).

Liam’s POV randomly in early chapters.

_ Lunatic,  _ Liam thinks. _A noun meaning a mentally ill person. A madman, psychotic, crazy._

Liam’s met a lot of crazy people in his time. As a crisis response expert, he’s dealt with his fair share of lunatics and insane situations—but this one takes the cake. 

Tris is absolutely _out of his mind._

First the madman dives out of a shuttle after Liam on the off-chance he can save him—and then the bloody bastard survives the resulting plummet by the skin of his teeth, just like Liam. He has the audacity to smile at Liam, like everything went according to plan. It’s that smile which sticks with him—that, and the wild look in his eyes. 

Liam has seen those eyes before. He saw them all the time in battle, saw them when someone saved their friend at the cost of their own life, knows they mean the owner burns bright but dies young—and it’s there on that cliffside where Liam decides that’s not going to happen to this one. 

This one, he tells himself. This one he’ll save. 

He won’t let this one burn out and die like so many bright lights before them. 

xXx

This one has a death wish.

Tris likes to charge across the battlefield like a raging lunatic looking for an early grave—then he has the nerve to smile like he’s high on life itself.

The first time it happens, Liam’s stunned at the bravery displayed, but he’s also impressed. Tris certainly has a handle on his biotics and the thought of not walking away from the fight simply doesn’t cross his mind—Kirkland’s in trouble, and that’s all there is to it. In the half-second it takes for Tris to charge across the field and save Kirkland’s life, dread coils like a snake ready to lunge in the pit of Liam’s stomach. 

But Tris saved him. Kirkland lives because Tris has the self-preservation of a mayfly.

The second time it happens, Liam’s mostly irritated. How can someone possibly be this reckless?

The third time—he’s enraged. 

Tris has the eyes of someone ready and willing to die young—and there’s nothing Liam can do to stop it. 

xXx

Liam hates those eyes because they’re a failure waiting to happen—waiting in the shadows, ready to strike the second he lets his guard down. 

Tris tells him to lob a grenade at him.

And the crazy thing is? Crazier than a guy telling someone to blow him up?

_ Liam does it _ . 

Because people with those eyes are trustworthy. They’ll break your heart into a million pieces, but they always know what’s right. A part of Liam envies people like Tris. They always know the right thing to do because their moral compass is so firmly set to ‘noble’ they can’t possibly even fathom making a choice where they let others down. 

Liam hates those eyes. They’re moral and noble and pure and easy to trust— _but they kill you in the end_. 

They kill you because they never live.

They can’t.

It’s not in their nature. 

xXx

Liam’s best friend had those same eyes. 

His funeral was six months before they shipped out to Andromeda. 

They were crazy, too. Covered Liam’s body with their own during a firefight they never walked away from. Absolutely insane. 

Liam tries to prepare himself for Tris’s funeral.

The thought of it hurts more than it should, considering the short length of time they’ve known each other. 

It’s the eyes, he tells himself. The eyes and the utter lunacy Tris displays at all times. 

Those eyes are so familiar. He’s known them all his life. 

Soon they’ll close.

xXx

By some absurd luck, they make it off Habitat 7. 

Tris seems to beat back death by sheer force of will, and with the danger behind them, Liam starts to let himself hope. 

Tris is easy to like. He’s easy to befriend and he makes the heartache of losing his best friend dissipate ever-so-slightly. 

Maybe this doesn’t have to end in disaster after all.

xXx

The second the storm starts in the underground vault, panic consumes him. 

When Tris shoves him into the gravity well, a piece of his heart shatters along pre-existing fissures.

_ Don’t do this, _ he wants to shout at those crazy eyes. _Don’t make me go through this again._

Those eyes linger in his vision long after the gravity well spits him back out up top—back at safety. Peebee follows him up but Tris never shows, and deep down Liam knows the truth.

That doesn’t stop him from shouting at the Pathfinder—doesn’t stop him from demanding they go back down and look, go back and give Tris a chance at life, keep those wild eyes open. 

Alec Ryder refuses. “He’s already dead,” he says calmly. His tone is quiet and collected, warring with the sorrow threatening to consume Liam from the inside out. 

“We have to go back down!” he shouts back at his commanding officer. 

Tris is a good person with his best friend’s eyes, and he doesn’t deserve to die just because his light shined the brightest. 

“He’s gone,” Alec Ryder says again. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Deep down, he knows this. He knows there’s nothing that can be done now, because lunatics like Tris will never live. They can’t. They don’t know how. 

But admitting failure again isn’t an option. It can’t be an option, because he can’t lose people all the time. 

He has to be able to save them _sometimes_. Has to be able to get it right some of the time. 

But the gravity well is off and Tris doesn’t come back up. He just doesn’t come back. 

Those eyes were never meant to last. 

xXx

_ Crazy,  _ Liam thinks. _Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results._

He’s crazy, he decides. Out of his damn mind just like everyone else. 

Tris is alive by some miracle—some stroke of luck. 

He’s alive and well and smiling sheepishly like the whole thing was simply a misunderstanding. He smiles like he didn’t knock on Death’s door demanding an answer. 

And those eyes are still crazy, but they’re still open and maybe that’s enough. 

It has to be enough because Liam can’t bury him again. 

_ This one,  _ he thinks. _This one I’ll save._

People like Tris burn brighter than others and burn out quickly because the universe can’t handle their light. People with those eyes illuminate the black and white world of reality until you can paint the walls yourself— _then they expire_. 

Those eyes are a curse, both to their owners and those around them. 

xXx

Tris is a lunatic for jumping out of a shuttle on the off-chance he can save Liam. 

_ Liam’s insane for not letting that be the end of it.  _


	2. Exit Strategies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place toward the end of chapter 26 of Another Piece of the Puzzle, after the Roekaar are dealt with and Reyes takes Tris home with him.

Reyes Vidal is a man in control of his own life. He has all the exits in sight, exit strategies ready to spring into motion at any given second, and he trusts no one but himself. It’s a simple, easy life, and his past experiences come in handy in Andromeda. He’s deep into his plans and schemes of taking over Kadara Port and overthrowing Sloane Kelly, and she still has absolutely no idea what kind of danger she’s in or that he’s even a contender, let alone her biggest rival. 

Everything is going according to plan and Reyes is in control of everything that’s happening around him.

Until Tris Ryder shows up. 

When told to meet a new contact under the his codename of Shena, he’s not at all prepared for the plucky, sarcastic youth he’s presented with. His instructions said to meet the Human Pathfinder—an older man by the name of Alec Ryder, infamous for his work on the AI technology which thrust them toward Andromeda. Reyes knows of the name, has seen the man once or twice in televised interviews wherein he spoke about the upcoming trip to Andromeda and gave a quick, pseudo lecture on the SAM units which would be implanted in every Pathfinder to aid them in their journey into a new galaxy. Reyes was prepared to meet a highly successful man full of himself.

What he got was something—someone—else. 

Tris is sarcastic and mouthy and easy on the eyes. He’s attractive in that superficial kind of way Reyes likes, because at his core, Reyes Vidal is a primal man with primal urges and Tris is pretty to look at. Deep blue pools of eyes, complexion caught somewhere between tan and pale, combined with tussled dark blond hair and a lean, athletic build, his height only slighter shorter than Reyes himself. He’s nice to look at, and his voice is almost soothing, unlike all the other voices which grate on his very last nerve every hour of every day. 

Tris is attractive, but it’s more than that. 

Reyes knows he’s in deep shit when he brings Tris home with him. He doesn’t bring _anyone_ there. Keema only knows of its existence out of necessity, and even then, she’s strictly not allowed there while Reyes sleeps. But here he is now, with a stranger in the next room, and he’s left staring up at the ceiling wondering where he went wrong. How he got here. What even happened.

It was that sheepish smile, he’s certain. That sheepish grin when Tris asked if he knew anywhere with a shower and food, after he’s worked tirelessly helping Reyes and burying dead bodies with no one to mourn them. 

Maybe his real troubles began with that, he thinks. When Tris Ryder cared more about a corpse on the ground than anyone had ever cared about Reyes his whole entire life. It certainly slotted things into perspective for him. He didn’t think people like Tris existed before now, and sometimes he can’t bring himself to believe Tris is real, despite how pathetic that sounds, even to himself. People like Tris just don’t exist and anyone who says otherwise is lying.

But Tris is real. He’s the real thing. A caring, noble heart if ever there was one – a rarity indeed. So Reyes dropped his guard and brought him home and he’s actually contemplating sleeping with someone else in his house now. Contemplating letting his guard drop to the point he’s okay being unconscious around anyone else—even the Pathfinder’s son. Even with his one-night stands, he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t bring them home with him and he certainly doesn’t stay the night with them. If he’s sleeping, he needs to know he’s safe. He can’t trust anyone but himself, so he’s only safe when he’s alone.

But he’s not alone now. Someone else is here and he doesn’t feel threatened. 

It’s this lack of alarm coursing through him that’s the real problem. It’s what’s keeping him awake late into the night. 

Tris killed people today. Members of the Roekaar, but he still killed them so very easily. His body glowed blue and he made it look so _easy_. It was almost mesmerizing to see, and Reyes barely had to do anything while Tris charged about like a madman. He moved with quick, graceful movements like the battle was a dance, and then stuck around to bury the bodies, even though those members tried to kill him. 

Tris is different from everyone else Reyes has ever met. A good different. A breath of fresh air, a type of person he didn’t think existed but had secretly hoped would come around anyway. As a kid he used to think some noble person would come sweep him off his feet – maybe not romantically, because eight-year-olds didn’t care about romance, but he’d hoped someone would come save him from his horrid life on the streets nevertheless. 

It never happened, of course. He was stuck there until he joined the Andromeda Initiative, aching for a new lease on life, to be someone – _anyone_ – else, someone better than he was before. Of course, when you dream of something so strongly, when you ache for it to be real – the illusion shatters and you’re left with only the broken fragments of a life lost before it could even be found. 

But now…

Tris exists now. He’s here, in Reyes’s house, stumbling into Reyes’s life after he lost all hope of anything ever changing—of ever digging himself out of this hole. Tris is here now and he’s noble and good and pure in a way Reyes didn’t think possible. And he has absolutely no way to comprehend such a person’s existence except to hoard them for himself. 

Reyes Vidal is a selfish man, after all. Sloane will never give Tris a chance, especially now that they’ve helped Terev escape and put a target on Tris’s head. She’ll never see his potential; she’ll never realize what an ally she’s lost. 

But Reyes knows. 

Tris might be his ticket out of this life. Or, at the very least, Tris might be the only way for him to become someone other than this wretched smuggler he’s always been. 

Reyes always knows the exits and has multiple exit strategies for any given scenario… but he never saw Tris coming. 

And Tris might be the only real exit he’ll ever get.


End file.
